LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG GUNS, My Third Original Novel, Is Done

This is a little late, but here's some good news. My third original novel Little People, Big Guns is now finished.

It's actually been finished for a couple weeks now, but I wanted to run the last three chapters through the writing group, go through a backlog of older critiques I'd set aside due to real-life obligations, review the comments from a friend who'd read the whole thing in a couple days (it's around 28,000 words, which technically makes it a novella), and then finally give the whole thing a once-over before I sent it out. I've got a contact at a small bizarro press whom I'd pitched an earlier version of the story to at the World Horror Conference 2015, so I sent it his way and hoped for the best.

Okay, maybe I should actually describe the plot. A few years ago I read a news story claiming TV chef Gordon Ramsay's dwarf porn star double was found dead in a badger den. It turns out the story might not actually be true, but at that point the earliest version of the story, entitled "Badgers vs. Midgets," was born. Basically a little person (a whole lot people with the condition actually consider "midget" a slur) is killed by a predatory badger, the local law enforcement declines to investigate, and so the local little persons take matters into their own hands.

Unfortunately, as I learned from the gentleman at the pitch session, that would only work as the first act. What happens next? Fortunately I was quick-thinking and spun out a plot involving militant animal-rights activists and a bear-sized super-badger. As my writing-group cohort Katherine Mankiller would put it, "peak silliness" has been achieved. I spent the last year and a half banging it out and now it's in someone else's hands.

And although the story seems tasteless and exploitative, it's actually much more thoughtful. LPBG touches on issues like the abortion of fetuses with dwarfism, mobility issues little people face, people rubbing little persons' heads for good luck (Tyrion Lannister has something to say about that), etc.

And that might make it an awkward fit. It's too farcical for a book seriously exploring the issues people with this condition face, but it might be too thoughtful for straight-up exploitation. I might well have to independently publish it like I did with a bunch of my short stories. There aren't very many publishers of bizarro fiction (which is the literary equivalent of a cult movie--think Bigfoot Crank Stomp or Shatnerquest), so I might exhaust those fairly quickly. I'm going to pitch it Thursday through #Pitmad, but that hasn't gotten me a lot of luck with more mainstream fare.

And if it does get published, either from a small press or as an Amazon original, it'll probably be under a pseudonym. I want the "Matthew W. Quinn brand" associated with more highbrow content like The Thing in the Woods (a teen horror novel that ultimately becomes a tale of interstellar war--think Down The Bright Way with monsters), Bloody Talons (an oral history of an alien invasion a la World War Z), and Battle for the Wastelands (post-apocalyptic steampunk Western--think Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones). A lowbrow exploitation farce, even one with a heart, doesn't really fit.

(A lot of writers have different pseudonyms for different brands. Delilah S. Dawson's fantasy-western Shadow novels Wake of Vultures and Conspiracy of Ravens go out under Lila Bowen, while James R. Tuck's Lovecraftian Red Right Hand is published under Levi Black and Bryan Cohen's Cinderella Dreams of Fire is published under Casey Lane.)

And the planned sequel, should this one take off, gets even more farcical. It involves a hidden community of little people called the Shire under threat from a master criminal code-named Santa Claus who kidnaps members of the community to force them to work in a mine. And his muscle is a blue-eyed white-furred Bigfoot. Nope, not classy at all.

I'll keep you all posted once I get more information.

Book Review: Bigfoot Crank Stomp

I have recently decided to try to finish the first draft of my novel Little People, Big Guns, which almost certainly qualifies as bizarro, this coming summer. I decided to do some research into the genre, so I bought Erik Williams' horror novel Bigfoot Crank Stomp, which I first became aware of after meeting representatives of Eraserhead Press and Deadite Press (they're all part of the same company) at the World Horror Convention last May. It was a short novel and a quick read, so here's my review...

The Plot

A group of meth-cooking petty criminals have captured Bigfoot and for some reason have gotten him hooked on methamphetamine. They intend to get him high and then burn down the cabin around him once they're finished cooking one last batch of meth, but some drug-dealing rivals interfere. Bigfoot gets loose and goes into a withdrawal fury and it's up to some local sheriff's deputies, a traumatized Iraq veteran, and a random camper to put a stop to him. Think a deranged, comedic cross between Breaking Bad and Harry and the Hendersons...

The Good

*One thing I like about bizarro fiction, even though I haven't read much of it, is that the plots are really creative and often hilarious. For example, Eraserhead put out a novel entitled Shatnerquest in which a bunch of nerds try to rescue William Shatner after the apocalypse--only to find he's grown into a Godzilla-sized monster and is rampaging around. Bigfoot Crank Stomp certainly fits this tradition, as the plot by itself amusing by virtue of just how ridiculous it is.

*One character gets high and a significant chunk of the story is told from his point of view. I've never done any sort of drug (let me make this quite clear) so I don't know how it feels to be intoxicated, but I like how the point of view shifts all the way to bugnuts insane. And some of the decisions the character made in this condition made me laugh out loud.

*The novel is never boring. It's a quick, entertaining read.

*There are some good descriptive passages, like how Bigfoot's roars and screams sound and how a man who fell off a cliff is described as looking like "he tried to kiss the inside of a tree trunk at high speed."

The Bad

*It's never explained just how the first set of criminals captured Bigfoot in the first place, or why they decided to get him hooked on meth. People who do drugs often make extremely questionable decisions, but we have scenes from the point of view of the meth-cookers who got their hands on Bigfoot and we still don't get so much as "it seemed like a good idea at the time." A character lampshades this by saying they'll probably never know (in response to a character who's astounded someone actually did this), but still.

*The scenes from Bigfoot's point of view refer to meth as "food." But wouldn't it differentiate meth from the more normal sort of food it eats? Perhaps some kind of modifier of "food" like "happy food" or "sleepy food" or something. If anything, even if Bigfoot is a being of less-than-human intelligence, it would differentiate between the food that it eats and something that goes up its nose.

*Another group of characters are introduced a little over halfway through the story. It would have been better if they were at least mentioned earlier. Perhaps as clients of the drug dealers, or someone whom the sheriff is suspicious of? Think Chekhov's Gun.

*The novel isn't very long--according to Amazon it's 156 pages, but it cost $4.95. Marko Kloos's much-longer Frontlines e-books (as of this review Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, Angles of Attack, and the forthcoming Chains of Command) are around three times as long each at the same price. Although the novel was a quick read and entertaining, it's far too short for an e-book price that high.

*Not sure how much staying power the novel has. When I reviewed Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart (you can see that here), I criticized the purchase price for being too high for something that short, but I've re-read The Hellbound Heart at least twice. I'm not sure if I'll re-read Bigfoot Crank Stomp.

The Verdict

Although it's a fun book, it's too short for the purchase price and I don't foresee it having a lot of re-read value. If you've got Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, though, a borrow would be worth your while for a trip to the gym or killing a couple hours. Six out of ten.

Writing Update, Featuring the World Horror Conference...

The weekend before last, I got the chance to volunteer at the World Horror Conference, which came to Atlanta this year. Although I've been to DragonCon and AnachroCon multiple times, this is the first time I've attended a conference dedicated solely to horror and the first time I've worked as a volunteer in that context. And I got a gig as a panel monitor, which meant I could watch panels so long as I kept all the speakers hydrated, kept the room clean, etc.

Not only did I get to see some interesting panels, but I got to make some very useful contacts. I talked with representatives from a small press (I'm not going to name said press at the moment, for reasons you will see) and pitched them The Thing in the Woods. They were interested, and one of the relevant editors gave me what looks like a personal e-mail address to send it to. I spent the last week editing the book (mostly for style and some minor grammatical quibbles) and put it in the press's preferred format and submitted it to all the appropriate e-mail addresses last Saturday. The press's response time is within 90 days, with six months on the outside. Now all that there is to do is wait and keep my fingers crossed.

The conference also yielded an unexpected bonus. I attended pitch sessions hoping to snag a spot with one press I was interested in as a possible market for Thing. Instead I was seated with another press, one that puts out horror that's too gruesome for me and for whom Thing would not be a good project. So on a whim I decided to pitch my on-hiatus bizarro story Little People, Big Guns, which features a group of little people making war on a pack of badgers that killed one of their own, to another imprint by the same company. They were really impressed, which one of them said was the most entertaining pitch they'd heard all day. However, they said it sounded like Act I rather than a full novel. Their rule is to keep the insanity escalating. So on the fly I came up with Act II and Act III, the former of which involves the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (which would explain one character's strange behavior in Act I) and the latter of which involves a gigantic bear-sized badger and said character missing a foot and with a literal ax to grind.

They liked the plot, and so now I've got another project to write. Considering how I originally intended for this to be a short story (or at most a novella) I'd self-publish on Amazon for the Kindle, the possibility that this could be a published novel (albeit probably a short one) is a major boon.

Finally, I met a cool guy who's a voice-actor. Given my earlier dabbling with the idea of making "I am the Wendigo" into an audio book, this could be a really useful connection. I've got a lot going on right now, but I've definitely saved his business card.

So let this be a lesson to all aspiring writers--if you want to make good contacts, network, and pitch, volunteering at conferences is one way to do it. However, you should take pains not to be obnoxious or in it for yourself. Remember, volunteering is work, and you should put that first. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of time for the stuff you want to do as well.

My Writing Plan for the Month

As I might have mentioned earlier, I have revived my monthly writing bet with one friend for the month of December and will be continuing it in January with another friend. Now that I'm done with graduate school and my magazine internship, I can get started on it in earnest. Thus far I've written 1,700-ish words for two different projects. Hopefully I'll be able to do better, considering last December I wrote nearly 12,000 words.

Here're some goals I hope to reach for the month:

*The Thing in the Woods is 53,000-odd words at present, but the few agents I've sent it off to have said it needs to be longer. My goal is to get to at least 60,000 words this month through judicious adding of a few words per page (much like how I cut, by nicking a few words per page) of extra description, atmosphere, etc. I've also written a new scene that might be 1,000 words or so that I haven't plugged into the main draft yet. Samhain Publishing, a small press that published the novel Shadows in the Mist I really enjoyed, has a minimum of 60,000 for print books. The main way I know as an author to market a book is to do book signings, so having a print book is essential. Plus 60,000 words would put me well ahead of the bare-minimum figure of 55,000 words. 7,000 words is doable, I would think.

*My current project--that I won't go into details with for now--is at 17K words or so. Owing to the nature of the project there's a lot of journalism (playing to my strengths) and telling instead of showing (which is easier to write). I had the notion of finishing it this month, but that might be a little too ambitious. I took a couple chapters to writing group yesterday and spent a fair bit of the afternoon editing based on their suggestions.

*I've got 2,000 words of a bizarro novella or novel involving badgers and heavily-armed little people written. If this is a novella, I might be able to finish it this month. This is the first time I've written comedy in years. Joke topics include badgers, hippies, little people, and even the death of David Carradine. :)

I can already foresee spreading myself too thinly and not finishing anything. So let the games begin.

January Writing Contest Results

I've found more people to do the monthly writing contest with and as a result what was originally supposed to be for the summer of 2013 continues apace. Here's the breakdown of the 11,348 words I wrote for my different projects:

For starters, the single biggest block of new content was written for The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The God of the Wet Wood (formerly The Thing in the Woods). Around 3,700 or so words, most of which comprise a prologue in which some Atlanta gang-bangers run into something a bit more frightening than the rivals they intended to ambush. The story takes place around Georgia State University, so I'm going to need to do some exploring when the weather is warmer. The events of this story take the overall saga on a more science-fiction trail, although the overall tone is horror-based.

Next in terms of content is the fourth Wastelands novel, whose tentative title is Return.  Ironically for a series whose first tale has been described as a "boy book," most of the material I've written after the second book has focused on a female-dominated harem intrigue subplot. Irony. Around 1,500 words or so.

After that, I translated "I am the Wendigo" into Spanish in hopes of making more foreign sales. I read an article about some...dubious Kindle stories that made the author $30,000 a month at one point and one thing that stuck out was that she had them translated into German. I can't speak German, but I can speak enough Spanish that I could grind out a translation myself or (what I actually did) translate it a paragraph at a time using Google Translate and correct for mistakes, idiomatic expressions, etc. No sales of "Yo Soy El Wendigo" so far, but I did move a few in Mexico, Spain, Italy, and surprisingly the USA when I set it for free for a couple days. That was around 1,500 words there.

I also wrote another 1,000 words for a different project. Not going to say what it is--if I can't sell it to The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction under my own name, it'll go on Kindle under a pseudonym to avoid causing job problems later. Sufficient to say it fits into the "Bizarro" sub-genre and involves heavily-armed little people. Around 1,000 words.

The God of the Wet Wood saw another 1,000 words added, mostly new material from the POV of the female lead Amber. I was hoping to get it to at least 50,000 words, but I got it only halfway past 47,000. Two of the prospective markets I've found will only accept works of 60,000 words plus, while one will do shorter e-books but only print 60,000+ works. Since much of my strategy for marketing an actual book involves book signings, that simply won't do. Hopefully the critique I'm doing on 2/10 will help me find a solution.

I also wrote 780-odd words for a fourth short story featuring my supervillain protagonist Andrew Patel. I've got a cover for a four-story collection featuring my first two stories "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must" and two plotted stories further exploring the consequences of the events of those two, so now I need to write some material. :) A $3 anthology with four stories might seem a bit more credible than four individual stories for $0.99 each.

The rest of the word count consists of odds and sods, including some new material for my neglected SF novel The Cybele Incident, some material for the *seventh* Wastelands novel, and a cover letter for The God of the Wet Wood. February is looking a bit busy with graduate school and a paper I'm presenting at the University of Georgia, so I'll have my work cut out for me.